Eastern Front 1945-some thoughts

[Vorotyntsev]

Originally posted by Roksovkiy:

The idea that soviet strategic/operational skill was used to negate German tactical skill from 1943 onwards is an old myth perpetuated by so called ?Soviet Experts?.

Of course you're correct, I entirely agree. It was dramatic improvements Soviet tactical skill which was used to negate German tactical skill from 1943 onwards. Soviet strategic mobility and operational skill merely ensured success over what was essentially a 19th century army with a few 20th century bits tacked on.

[RCHRD]

Immediately after the cessation of Citadel the Soviets launched a counteroffensive with armies supposedly gutted at Kursk. This offensive broke into, and in some cases through, well prepared fieldworks northwest of Belgorad in one day. They ended up on, and over, the Dneiper by the end of the year, gutting the Germans in their turn. That's pretty good operational methodology in my book. They came a long, long way. They had good practice against the Rumanians, then the Italians, then the Hungarians. I have a book of Soviet Tactical doctrine that shows a remarkable grasp of the operational art, good enough to win the war.

[RCHRD]

And I hope to be good enough at this game to use that art on some of you.

[PJungnitsch]

Originally posted by Grisha:

[QB]But, to call the effectiveness of Soviet operational/strategic skill a myth is amazing.

Something was certainly wrong. From what I've read so far it's like the Soviets improved dramatically from an army that would lose when vastly outnumbering their opponents to an army that would win when vastly outnumbering their opponents.

If their operation/strategic skills were so amazing, was it their tactical skills (CMBB level, perhaps?) that were so poor?

[RCHRD]

Bingo.

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

Did the Russians have Ultra?

Not directly. Ultra was a closely held secret between the BCW and the US. But the Soviets were fed Ultra "product" through a ring of spies operating in Switzerland. This ring had been penetrated by a British agent (perhaps more than one) who put the information into the pipeline under the guise of receiving it from humint sources within the Nazi regime. The Germans got onto the ring (though of course not onto its Ultra sources) and pressured the Swiss into breaking it up sometime in 1944 I think. By then, the Soviets no longer were in great need of such information anyway.

Michael

[RCHRD]

Or so it's claimed. Three thousand plus German tanks entered the Soviet Union. Opposite were hordes of obsolete tanks and about a thousand T-34's and fewer KV-1's, say about 500. (I can look up the numbers but these are in the ballpark) I've crawled all over them and they are a wonder of their age. The T-34 is not particularly large but is wonderfully balanced. A tank killing gun, sloped, thick armor, and light on it's feet, capable of running rings around your basic boxy, underarmed panzer. It looks almost delicate. The KV looks positively scary. Squat, invulnerable. Both had transmission problems. Few radios were available, only the platoon leader had one. Someone else might describe their other shortcomings. But they were vastly superior to the German tanks in armor, guns, and, for the T-34, mobility. The Germans themselves say that Russian gunnery was good. Yet the Germans, from June 41 until the spring of 42 when the upgunned models started arriving at the front, gave better than they got. There has to be a reason. I read somewhere that 95,000 russian medium tanks were built during the war and 90 some odd thousand of them were knocked out. I'm not sure of the source for the knocked out figure. The series called panzertruppen(?) by Jentz has some good accounts of the Tankers war at ground level.

[Scott B]

The Soviets fought most of 1941 outnumbered at the front by the Germans and German allies. They did not achieve a 2:1 numerical superiority until just after the battle of Stalingrad (Feb '43), and this was only temporary-- they didn't keep a 2:1 numerical superiority until Summer 1943, and did not reach a 3:1 superiority until early Autumn 1944. Source: When Titans Clashed, which itself obtained these figures from Krivosheev and Ziemke.

It is important to note that Soviet organization and force structure, the quality of Soviet generalship, and their understanding of operational art based on the theories of the interwar period and the lessons of the first and second period of the war all improved more quickly than Soviet tactical expertise did. It is easy to point out the gains that the Germans made in 1941 and 1942, but you also have to consider their opponent-- the Red Army in the first period of the war was about as unprepared as one could possibly imagine to fight a war, across the board. For comparative purposes, they were less well prepared to go to war than were the Iraqis in the Gulf War.

Scott

[killmore]

Originally posted by Doug Beman:

I recall from reading higher-level east front history that it took the Red Army, for all their crushing weight of total numbers, 2.5 years to retake territory the Germans, had taken in 1 or 1.5; furthermore even in the early war the Soviets "raw outnumbered" the Germans.

DjB

Wait a sec here.

Front line was pretty much the same in summer 1944 as in summer 1941.

So it took germans 1.5 years to occupy most territory. (Until Jan 1943)

Then 6 months was pretty much stable. (Until summer 1943)

Then from summer 1943 to summer 1944 thats only a year.

So you couls say that it took Soviets 1 year to retake all that germans managed to occupy in 1.5

[Maj. Battaglia]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

Did the Russians have Ultra?

The Soviets did not have access to Ultra from the British, and, unless evidence is buried in an old Soviet archive, the Soviets did not crack the Enigma code. They may have known of Ultra through their spies in Britain.

Unfortunately, the Soviets were not willing to exchange even basic intelligence with the Western Allies, so the Allies did not provide much, if any, in return. The British kept the existence of Ultra secret for many years after the war (one source says until the 1970's) because they thought such technology might be useful to the Soviets.

The Soviets did, however, have many high placed contacts, including one in the German High Command who regularly provided operational plans to the Soviets in a very timely manner. Now whether they were believed or not was a different story (e.g. the contacts provided info on Fall Blau in 1942 but Stalin would only believe the Germans would attack Moscow from the center). Overall, the Soviet Union had a good success rate with agents in Germany.

As Michael points out, the Soviets were also adept at sending small teams behind German lines to gather operational intelligence, and did so at Stalingrad, for example.

[kipanderson]

Michael emrys Hi,

Most of my books are still in storage as I have just moved house and am just about to move again. However, in most cases I can remember the sources fully.

Soviet Causalities and Combat Losses by GF Krivosheev, both David Glantz and Prof. John Erickson seem to believe the above book is accurate, as good as we will ever get anyway.

The various operational analysis books by Dupuy. They are not perfect, but again if you use his formulas with care they do the job. He was Prof. of Military History at Harvard and both the US DoD and British Operational Analysis Unit believed his methods were sound.

When it comes to German losses the figures I used come from the data in the back of one of those pamphlets put together by the US military other the war, using German sources. You know the sort of thing, Greenhill tend to publish them now. However, importantly my copy is one of the originals and in the back has the most detailed information on German military casualties I have ever come across. They clearly come straight out of German war time records. The reason I use the date line end June 43 to end March 44, is that this is how the data is presented.

American losses per combat day are worked out from the data in the back of Michael Doubler’s Closing With the Enemy.I was careful to assume that American battalions were twice the size of Soviet ones which is the likely historical reality. So as not to skew the figures in favour of the Soviets, but it is a bit of the long story so I will not bore you with it now.

When using the Dupuy formulas the trick is to use the latest data on Soviet casualties and numbers and then assume both the Germans and Soviets were clones of one another. This gives you an anticipated causality ratio had the Soviets been of identical quality to the Germans, but present in the numbers they actually were historically. Then compare the above causality ratio with the actual/ historical causality ratio and you get an indication of their overall combat effectiveness. Not perfect, but simple and still a fairly good indication.

All the best,

Kip.

[Lindan]

I'm just reading several books on the fighting near Berlin. It's really amazing. If you were only interested in Karkhov, Stalingrad and such I highly recommend reading something about the last act of the war. It tells a tale of the total destruction of a once proud army.

[Andreas]

Originally posted by Roksovkiy:

The idea that soviet strategic/operational skill was used to negate German tactical skill from 1943 onwards is an old myth perpetuated by so called “Soviet Experts”.

From Glantz: The initial period of war

p.307

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />25th July 41, OKH situation briefing, report by the Chief 'Foreign Armies East' :The Russian commanders generally fail in mobile warfare. Their command apparatus is not up to this task

It should, however, be noted that this judgement was made in 1941. In 1943-44, the Russian commanders proved that they had learned to conduct mobile operations.</font>